


Trepidation

by 8bitcu



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 06:38:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14665392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8bitcu/pseuds/8bitcu
Summary: A fair god wouldn’t allow a dishonest man happiness.





	Trepidation

**Author's Note:**

> Submitted for your approval: what if Gerome was the head collecting mercenary instead of Inigo?

Gerome knows that old habits die hard.

He’s come to accept as much in the form ever-present shadows in the corner of his eye, the inexplicable shifts of air in a room and the sting of cold, calculating eyes burning the hair at the nape of his neck. He sleeps with his back to the wall, face toward the door. The ghost of a dishonest past an unwelcome, all-consuming devil over his shoulder with a vise grip on his lungs.

Days come and go peacefully, though he must fight the urge to reach for cold metal no longer strapped to his side, finger ghosting over a trigger that isn’t there. He barely remembers becoming a hostage to his own memory, guilty conscience holding a metaphorical rifle to his chest, but a lifetime spent taking and taking and  _taking_  brought to a screeching halt had left his nerves severed and frayed in limbo. Comeuppance in the form of unending fear. Just what he deserved.

Inigo called him “nervous” which would be fitting if maybe it were the gentle pulse of butterflies in his stomach instead of the weight and poison of lead. Perhaps it’d be nervousness if his head swam with the dizzying haze of uncertainty instead of thrashing wildly in it. If maybe when he closed his eyes he didn’t see the brilliant white of Inigo’s smile, then rich, red velvet petals spilling from him, taking him away. He knew better.

It wasn’t nervousness that plagued him, it was pensive fear. A fair god wouldn’t allow a dishonest man happiness, he told himself. The truth was he was a mess for every dragging second of the day until his key turned in the lock after the streets grew slick with dusk, sliver of a moon over his shoulder, and his door opened to show him what was his, untouched, unharmed. A rueful smile tugging at the corner of his lips at the glow erupting beneath his pores, the sun kissed skin of soft hands beckoning him closer and calling him home. He was wringing bandaged knuckles dyed pink with dried blood, guilt a dying flame in the back of his mind when Inigo met him at the door. He’d trace the slopes of his sides, kissing him with slow reverence and promising to make it better. He didn’t deserve it, he knew, but he reveled in it nonetheless.

**Author's Note:**

> (I was mercilessly bullied into posting this)


End file.
